Changthang

East of Leh, the road climbs onto a different Ladakh. The Changthang plateau is an extension of the Tibetan high country, and past a certain altitude the villages give way almost entirely to the Changpa, semi-nomadic herders whose lives are still organised around pashmina goats, yak and the seasonal move between pastures.

The journey

We built our route around two lakes: Tso Kar’s salt flats and Tso Moriri’s improbable turquoise at 4,500m, connected by a multi-day crossing of the Rupshu that touches 5,400m at its highest pass.

It is a landscape with almost nothing in it, in the best sense: no trees, few permanent structures, days where the only other people you meet are the family whose camp you pass and are, more often than not, invited into for butter tea.

Changthang rewards patience over spectacle. Its value is cumulative: the scale of the emptiness, the specificity of a way of life that has barely changed shape in centuries, the sense of having crossed into a genuinely different Ladakh.

What years here have taught us

Five visits across three seasons have taught us things no guidebook mentions.

1. Acclimatise before the lakes. Tso Moriri sits at about 4,500m and the road from Leh climbs fast. Guests who skip a gentler first night feel it, so we never do.
2. The herders move. Changpa camps follow the grass. The family you meet one year may be two valleys away the next, so we keep notes on pastures, not just villages.
3. The roads keep changing. New surfaces shorten some stages and close old tracks. We re-walk and re-time the stages on every return.
4. The light sets the day. Mornings at Tso Kar are still and pale; by afternoon the wind turns the water white. We plan around it.